Sophia Stone-Holmbeck Head Coach

Coach Sophia started her coaching career with the Grinnell Tigersharks as a volunteer coach.  She also coached the Beloit Aquatic Team with the beginner swimmers and finally with Tornadoes Swim Team.  She started with our younger swimmers and is now the Head Coach working with the middle school and high school groups. She began swimming at age 7 with the Grinnell Tigersharks in Grinnell, Iowa. She went on to swim with the Grinnell High School team and then on the Beloit College Swim Team..

Sophia loves to see swimmers drop times and enjoys watching kids experience the excitement of overcoming a challenge or accomplishing a goal. Her favorite stroke is butterfly and in high school she earned letters in swimming all four years. She was also the team captain in her senior year at college and won most spirited two years in a row. In college, she was a team captain and earned letters three years.

Her funniest swim story is when she was about 8 or 9 years old and she finished her 50 breaststroke in a different lane than she started in! Most of all she has great memories of playing cards at meets and long car rides with friends.

Coach Sophia is a full time mom of two Tornadoes. She has a passion for swimming and loves to help all swimmers enjoy their swim team experience.

All of our Tornadoes swim coaches are held to a high standard of teaching and must possess USA Swimming Coaching and YMCA Coaching Certifications.

Erika Andrews Assistant Coach

Coach Erika was born and raised in Tooele, Utah where her love and passion for swimming started at a young age. Born into a family of swimmers, she grew up at swimming pools watching her siblings race and compete at all levels of the sport. At the young age of five, she started her USA swimming career with the Tooele County Pratt Aquatic USA swimming team and proceeded to compete for the local USA competition team and then later the local high school until she graduated high school. Due to some medical conditions, after high school, it was time to step away from competitive swimming. After college, the opportunity came to coach a pre-competitive team in Salt Lake City, and the love of coaching and developing swimmers set in.

Coach Erika's coaching journey started with a precompetitive team in Salt Lake County and has grown since. She has been allotted the opportunity to work with a variety of levels and styles of swimming from high school teams, pre competition teams and USA teams. After completing her masters program she was able to move out to the bush of Alaska for a school counseling job and was approached by the athletic director of the local high school if she would be interested in starting a swimming team.  She was able to instill the values of hard work, water safety, and physical activity in the youth of the tribal populations in Alaska. Coach Erika gladly accepted and coached for a year before coming back to the lower 48, specifically to the PNW. As a coach and a swimmer Coach Erika values teaching strong techniques and understanding of the strokes to improve the speed of the swim. As a Tornado coach, Erika is excited to instill the love and passion for swimming in the youth she works with and develop all the strokes to provide swimmers with the opportunity to develop a holistic love of the sport!      

All of our Tornadoes swim coaches are held to a high standard of teaching and must possess USA Swimming Coaching and YMCA Coaching Certifications.

Kelcee Smith Assistant Coach
Coach Kelcee Smith comes to the Tornadoes from the Southeastern Swimming Conference where she has coached for Crawfish Aquatics in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Panama City Swim Team in Panama City, Florida, and the City of Mobile Swim Association in Mobile, Alabama. Kelcee stumbled into coaching in 2007 as a part-time job in college and has been hooked ever since. Her primary experience is with younger athletes new to competitive swimming, but she has dabbled in age group coaching, lead master's practices, and taught lessons to a wide variety of people, ages 4 to 64. As a former competitive swimmer and triathlete, Kelcee loves fostering healthy competition in her athletes.
 
Off the pool deck, Kelcee is a Fisheries Biologist and is passionate about conserving threatened and endangered species. On her off days, she can often be found baking sweet treats, knitting with her cat in her lap, or cheering for her beloved New Orleans Saints.
 
All of our Tornadoes swim coaches are held to a high standard of teaching and must possess USA Swimming Coaching and YMCA Coaching Certifications.
Colette Crabbe Assistant Coach

Coach Colette grew up in Belgium. After an almost drowning accident when she was seven years old, she learned to swim when she was 10 and was one of the toughest kids to teach. She refused to put her head in the water, no matter what! Eventually, she joined a year-round competitive swim team where she developed good swimming technique as well as discovered the benefits of hard work and organization.

In Belgium, she progressively improved and started to have national Belgian records in individual medley, mid-distance and long-distance races. Freestyle is her weakest stroke but she had a very good endurance. She was on the national team and traveled all over Western Europe and the world for competitions. She participated at 2 European championships, 2 worlds and the 1976 Olympic games in Montreal where she finished 12th in the 400 IM.

After a long break to create a family, she restarted swimming when one of her daughters decided to join a swim team. It was then she discovered the joy of masters swimming and all the benefits linked to it. Her daughter is now grown but Coach Colette’s passion for swimming is still very much alive.

In high school she volunteered with the swim team, then eventually became the assistant coach and then the head coach at Clackamas High School (Oregon). She moved back to Belgium in 2011.

In Belgium, she was a swim coach for The British School in Brussels swim program for age group swimmers. She also coached a group of 8 to 12 years old pre-competition swimmers at the local swim team where swam on the master adult group.

When she moved back to the Vancouver, WA, she joined the Tornadoes and is sharing her strong passion for swimming with our swimmers.

All of our Tornadoes swim coaches are held to a high standard of teaching and must possess USA Swimming Coaching and YMCA Coaching Certifications.